Disease from a Fish Store stand point
 

Hi guys,

I've been recently made a manager of an LFS in Austin.
Until now I've only been a hobbiest and board junkie, but being responsible for an LFS has been an eye opening experience. Some of the things I used to complain about I now understand from being on the "other side".

Any thoughts on the best way to control disease and parasites in a large system that turns over hundreds of fish a month would be appreciated. I know a lot of folks run copper in their fish systems - I've never been a big fan of that before now.

We've also recently started dipping new arrivals - I prepare a FW dip by buffering the ph, and adding kanacyn and formalin to the mixture. We dip new arrivals for 1 to 3 minutes. I've frankly been suprised how well some fish handle the freshwater dips. Any opinions on the pros and cons of the formalin or the dips in general would be appreciated.

Thank for your input - I'm trying to provide better care for my animals as well as providing healthier fish/livestock for my customers.

as far as the copper. Just be sure to post a BIG sign stating that copper is run in the tanks, with a smaller note on what copper can do to corals/inverts. The last you want on your hands is a customer trying to sue you becuse he dumped the entire bag into a reef tank and corals died.


but on the flip side i work at a pet store as well. We avoid copper at all costs. we have 28 tanks. we have them broken down into seperate systems with 4 tanks per system. This helps us reduce the number of tanks we are treating at one time. but it does get hairy if for some reason there is an infected fish in each of the systems.(doesnt happen too often). We also supliment feedings with garlic.

You could try segregation the best you can. I.E. all scaleless fish in one system so you can use things such as malachyte green or methelyne blue in the systems without the scaleless, etc. Well thought out plans will help. :)

just my 2c.

-Rich

Thanks - yeah, I always tell customers not to put our livestock water in their tanks, and that it's probably a good practice not to do it with anyone elses water either.

check the edit. didnt realize you posted back so quick

There's probably not a whole lot you can do for the fish, unless you are prepared to quarantine all the new shipments for at least 4 weeks - which won't go down too well from a turnover perspective.

Marine "Ich" is the most common ailment that the fish will get and freshwater dips have been demonstrated to be in effective (Colorni, 1985). Copper or hyposalinity are the only effective treatement, but neither are all that practical for a large facility.

Maintaining copper levels in a number of tanks would be a real chore, especially as you should be testing twice daily.

Having each tank isolated and independent will go a long way to avoid the spread of disease and parasites between tanks. If you can't have the tanks separate, you could run a UV steriliser either between tanks or somewhere within the system so that no water travels from one tank to another, without being irradiated with UV.

Keep all inverts (including corals) competely isolated from fish. This is one area that really pysses me off about LFS. They put fish in the tanks with the corals, live rock and other invertebrates. If any of the fish get "Ich", the reproductive tomonts can attach to the corals or any hard surfaces and be introduced into a punters tank.

The best advice you can give your customers is to quarantine their fish for at least 6 weeks before they placed them in their main display tank. I don't see this as shifting the responsibility, but simply admitting the difficulties for a store. I know I would be more than happy with that sort of advice.

Formalin is pretty harsh stuff and needs to be administered in baths much longer than a couple of minutes to be effective. FW baths, however, are very effective for flukes. I've been seeing enough flukes in shippments from some of the larger wholesalers that I've taken to dipping all new arrivals in FW. Most other problems such as ich need to be addressed as needed with treatments that last for more than a couple of minutes. If you can isolate some tanks for treatment I would use hyposalinity for ich. Otherwise copper is the best bet, but only used as needed and preferably Sea Chem's Cupramine.